Strange guys giving candy to kids
Jun. 20th, 2011 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancingsingingEvery year at the school's May Fair celebration, among our little balloon tossing booths and whatnot, we also have Pocket Man. Pocket Man is one of the dads dressed up in an autumnal-leaf mask and a big bathrobe with extra pockets sewn all over it. The pockets are stuffed with little prizes which the children can take out. I have no idea where Pocket Man came from--I don't think it's like a Waldorfy or spiritual tradition. My best guess is that some alumnus parent came up with it the year they were planning May Fair and it stuck. I personally love Pocket Man--I love to see the kids running up all excited and I love to see the expression on the man's face doing it, once he's got over the initial awkwardness. Last year, my spouse did Pocket Man and it was interesting to me to watch his initial strong reluctance and then to see how much joy it gave him.
Every year, there are parents who want to nix Pocket Man from the festivities because it creeps them out. And I can relate; there is an aspect to it that creeps me out, too. Even though Pocket Man is always one of the dads, someone every parent totally knows, and the whole thing happens right out in the middle of the field with everyone watching.
This all reminds me of this older guy, Bert, who was a neighbor of mine when I was maybe five years old. He would give us kids jellybeans when we went to his house and rang the bell. He never invited us in or ever did anything the least bit creepy. He would just open the door, see a pack of hopeful-looking children, bring out his big bowl of jellybeans and give each kid a handful. (Back in those days, we were all allowed to wander the neighborhood entirely unsupervised.) I have a strange kind of dissonance around this memory. On one hand, as an adult and a parent, the whole thing freaks me out. If a (male) neighbor of mine were handing out candy and it wasn't Halloween, I seriously might call the police. But I remember clearly how happy it made me as a kid to have Bert give us jelly beans. More happy than just to get candy. It was like it made me feel like the world was a good place and that I lived in a real community, that adults who weren't my parents cared about the happiness of the kids in the neighborhood.
Some of it is the idea of an adult forming a relationship with a kid without the parents' knowledge. The other year at Wiscon, I was trying (mostly failing) to make balloon animals at the Gathering. And I totally freaked out an older sister by offering a balloon animal to a toddler while her mom was distracted talking to someone. And even though I totally was just trying to do something nice for a kid, after some reflection, I get why it freaked out the older sister.
But it also seems clear that there's also a gendered thing going on here. That in our culture, men are only allowed to care about children from a distance, or indirectly by making money or administrating a school or something. That we have a serious taboo against dudes lovingly interacting with children who aren't their own. Of course, it comes from a protective instinct to keep kids from getting molested, which is pretty damn important. I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the majority of child molesters are men (since the overwhelming majority of rapists and violent criminals are). But it still seems sad to me (for all of us--the kids, the non-dude adults, and the dudes themselves) that healthy, non-creepy men are so forbidden to participate in nurturing our children. And it seems like it's certainly an important piece in sorting out how women are almost always expected to be the nurturers and how childcare is so economically undervalued.
Oh! And also, one time an actual creepy dude did offer candy to my sister and I to try to get us into his car. Which we didn't do because we had been told a jillion times not to take candy from strangers. Which I totally don't want to have to tell my daughter because I don't want to give her the idea that the world is full of evil men who want to harm her at every turn. So I tell her not to get into anyone's car, and I don't let her wander the neighborhood alone. But still, I am so conflicted. Maybe I should tell her not to take candy from strangers. Ugh.
Every year, there are parents who want to nix Pocket Man from the festivities because it creeps them out. And I can relate; there is an aspect to it that creeps me out, too. Even though Pocket Man is always one of the dads, someone every parent totally knows, and the whole thing happens right out in the middle of the field with everyone watching.
This all reminds me of this older guy, Bert, who was a neighbor of mine when I was maybe five years old. He would give us kids jellybeans when we went to his house and rang the bell. He never invited us in or ever did anything the least bit creepy. He would just open the door, see a pack of hopeful-looking children, bring out his big bowl of jellybeans and give each kid a handful. (Back in those days, we were all allowed to wander the neighborhood entirely unsupervised.) I have a strange kind of dissonance around this memory. On one hand, as an adult and a parent, the whole thing freaks me out. If a (male) neighbor of mine were handing out candy and it wasn't Halloween, I seriously might call the police. But I remember clearly how happy it made me as a kid to have Bert give us jelly beans. More happy than just to get candy. It was like it made me feel like the world was a good place and that I lived in a real community, that adults who weren't my parents cared about the happiness of the kids in the neighborhood.
Some of it is the idea of an adult forming a relationship with a kid without the parents' knowledge. The other year at Wiscon, I was trying (mostly failing) to make balloon animals at the Gathering. And I totally freaked out an older sister by offering a balloon animal to a toddler while her mom was distracted talking to someone. And even though I totally was just trying to do something nice for a kid, after some reflection, I get why it freaked out the older sister.
But it also seems clear that there's also a gendered thing going on here. That in our culture, men are only allowed to care about children from a distance, or indirectly by making money or administrating a school or something. That we have a serious taboo against dudes lovingly interacting with children who aren't their own. Of course, it comes from a protective instinct to keep kids from getting molested, which is pretty damn important. I don't know the statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the majority of child molesters are men (since the overwhelming majority of rapists and violent criminals are). But it still seems sad to me (for all of us--the kids, the non-dude adults, and the dudes themselves) that healthy, non-creepy men are so forbidden to participate in nurturing our children. And it seems like it's certainly an important piece in sorting out how women are almost always expected to be the nurturers and how childcare is so economically undervalued.
Oh! And also, one time an actual creepy dude did offer candy to my sister and I to try to get us into his car. Which we didn't do because we had been told a jillion times not to take candy from strangers. Which I totally don't want to have to tell my daughter because I don't want to give her the idea that the world is full of evil men who want to harm her at every turn. So I tell her not to get into anyone's car, and I don't let her wander the neighborhood alone. But still, I am so conflicted. Maybe I should tell her not to take candy from strangers. Ugh.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-27 12:23 am (UTC)Re males not being permitted to behave in a nurturing fashion, an elderly Native American woman once told my mother than the saddest thing about life these days was that no one was allowed to hug other people's kids.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 06:49 pm (UTC)I'd love to hear about your decision to send her to a Waldorf school. My spouse and I are struggling to reconcile our geek identities/lifestyles with the Waldorfy thing about not stimulating children's intellects too early. We have one more year before she's too big for the kindergarten, and then we have to decide about 1st through 12th. Have you blogged about this, by any chance?
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 07:13 pm (UTC)I haven't really blogged about this, but the kid's been in Waldorf since mixed age kindergarten at 3-1/2, and she's rising into 8th grade now. It's been very, very good for her, both academically and socially.